August 1 6, 1877] 



NATURE 



321 



and that, where they did not reach the roof, the deposits were 

 covered with stalagmite. 



On the authority of Mr. Clift and Prof. Owen, Capt. 

 Mudge mentions reUcs of elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, sheep, 

 hyaena, dog, wolf, fox, bear, hare, and water-vole. The bones, 

 and especially the teeth, of the hy:ena exceeded in number those 

 of all the other animals, thoui^h remains of horse and ox were 

 very abundant. Mr, liellamy, whilst also mentioning all the 

 foregoing forms, with the exception of dog only, adds deer, pig, 

 glutton, weasel, and mouse. He also speaks of the abundance 

 of bones and teeth of hyoena, but seems to regard the fox as 

 being almost as fully represented ; and next in order he places 

 horse, deer, sheep, and rabbit or hare ; whilst the relics 

 of elephant, wolf, bear, pig, and glutton are spoken of as very 

 rare. The bones, he says, were found in the uppermost bed 

 only. They were frequently mere fragments and splinters, some 

 bemg undoubtedly gnawed, and all had become very adherent 

 through loss of their animal matter. Those of cylindrical form 

 were without their extremities ; there was no approach to 

 anatomical juxtaposition ; and the remains belonged to indi- 

 viduals of ail ages. Reliquia; of carnivorous animals greatly 

 exceeded those of the herbivora, and teeth were very abundant. 

 Coprolites occurred at some depth below the stalagmite, in the 

 upper bed, which also contained granitic and trappean pebbles, 

 and lumps of breccia made up of fragments of rock, bones, 

 pebbles, and stalagmite. The bones found prior to 1835 had been 

 removed as ruLbish, and some good specimens were recovered 

 irom materials employed in making a pathway. Nothing 

 indicating the presence of man appears to have been found. 



The Ash-Iio/c: — On the southern shore of Torbay, midway 

 between the town of Brixham and Berry Head, and about half 

 a mile Irom each, there is a cavern known as the Ash-Holc. It 

 was partially explored, probably about, or soon after, the time 

 Mr. MacEnery was engaged in Kent's Hole, by the late Rev. 

 H. F. Lyte, who, unfortunately, does not appear to have left 

 any account of the results. The earliest mention of this cavern 

 I have been able to find is a very brief one in Bellamy's 

 "Natural History of South Devon," published in 1839 (p. 14). 

 During the Plymouth Meeting in 1S41, Mr. George Bartlett, a 

 native of Brixham, who assisted Mr. Lyte, described to this 

 Section the objects of interest the Ash-Hole had yielded (see 

 Report Brit. Assoc. 1 85 1, Trans. Sections, p. 61). So far as 

 was then known the cave was thirty yards long and six yards 

 broad. Below a recent accumulation, four feet deep, of loam 

 and earth, with land and marine shells, bones of the domestic 

 fowl and of man, pottery, and various implements, lay a true 

 cave-earth, abounding in the remains of elephant. Prof Owen, 

 who identified, from this lower bed, relics of badger, polecat, 

 stoat, water-vole, rabbit, and reindeer, remarks, that for the 

 first good evidence of the reindeer in this island he had been 

 indebted to Mr. Bartlett, who stated that the remains were 

 found in this cavern (see " Brit. Foss. Mam." 1S46, pp. 109-110, 

 113-114, 116, 204, 212, 479-480). I have made numerous 

 visits to the spot, which, when ^Ir. Lyte began his diggings, 

 must have been a shaft-like fissure, accessible from the top only. 

 A lateral opening, however, has been quarried into it ; there is 

 a narrow tunnel extendmg westward, in which the deposit is 

 covered with a thick sheet of stalagmite, and where one is 

 tempted to believe that a few weeks' labour might be well 

 invested. 



Brixham Cavern. — Early in 1858 an unsuspected cavern was 

 broken into by quarrymen at the north-western angle of Wind- 

 mill Hill at Brixham, at a point seventy-five feet above the 

 surface of the street, almost vertically below, and 100 feet above 

 mean tide. On being found to contain bones, a lease in it was 

 secured for the Geological Society of London, who appointed 

 a committee of their members to undertake its exploration ; 

 funds were voted by the Royal Society, and supplemented by 

 private subscriptions ; the conduct of the investigation was 

 intrusted to Mr. Prestwich and myself; and the work, under 

 my superintendence, as the only resident member of the 

 committee, was begun in July, 1858, and completed at mid- 

 summer, 1S59. 



The cavern, comprised within a space of 135 feet from north 

 to south, and 100 from east to west, consisted of a series of 

 tunnel galleries from six to eighi feet in greatest width, and ten 

 to fourteen feet in height, with two small chambers and five 

 external entrances. 



The deposits, in descending order, were : — 



1st, or uppermost. A floor of stalagmite, from a few inches 



to a foot thick, and continuous over veiy considerable areas, but 

 not throughout the entire cavern. 



2nd. A mass of small angular fragments of limestone, 

 cemented into a firm concrete with carbonate of lime, com- 

 menced at the principal entrance, which it completely filled, 

 and whence it extended thirty-four feet only. It was termed 

 the first bed. 



3rd. A layer of blackish matter, about twelve long, and 

 nowhere more than a foot thick, occurred immediately beneath 

 the first bed, and was designated the second bed. 



4th. A red, tenacious, clayey loam, containing a large number 

 of angular and subangular fragments of limestone, varying from 

 very small bits to blocks a ton in weight, made up the third 

 bed. Pebbles of trap, quartz, and limestone were somewhat 

 prevalent, whilst nodules of brown hematite of iron and blocks 

 of stalagmite were occasionally met with in it. The usual 

 depth of the bed was from two to four feet, but this was 

 exceeded by four or five feet in two localities. 



5th. The third bed lay immediately on an accumulation of 

 pebbles of quartz, greenstone, grit, and limestone, mixed with 

 small fragments of shale. The depth of this, known as the 

 fourth or grave! bed, was undetermined ; for, excepting a few 

 feet only, the limestone bottom was nowhere reached. There 

 is abundant evidence that this bed, as well as a stalagmitic 

 floor which had covered it, had been partially broken up and 

 dislodged before the introduction of the third bed. 



Organic remains were found in the stalagmitic floor and in 

 each of the beds beneath it, with the exception of the second 

 only ; but as ninety-five per cent of the whole series occurred 

 in the third, this M'as not unfrequently termed the bone bed. 



The mammals represented in the stalagmite were bear, 

 reindeer. Rhinoceros tichorhinus, mammoth, and cave lion. 



The first bed yielded bear and fox only. 



In the third bed were found relics of mammoth. Rhinoceros 

 tichorhinus, \iOY5Q, Bos priniigenius, B.lon^ifrons, red deer, rein- 

 deer, roebuck, cave lion, cave hynena, cave bear, grizzly bear, 

 brown bear, fox, hare, rabbit, Lagoniys speheiis, water-vole, 

 shrew, polecat, and weasel. 



The only remains met with in the fourth bed were those of 

 bear, horse, ox, and mammoth. 



The human industrial remains exhumed in the cavern were 

 flint implements and a hammer-stone, and occurred in the third 

 and fourth beds only. The pieces of flint met with were thirty- 

 slx in number. Of these fifteen are held to show evidence of 

 h iving been artificially worked, in nine the workmanship is 

 rude or doubtful, four have been mislaid, and the remainder 

 are believed not to have been worked at all (see Phil. Trans., 

 vol. 163, 1S73, pp. 561, 562). Of the undoubted tools, eleven 

 were found in the third and four in the fourth bed. Two of 

 those yielded by the third bed, found forty feet apart, in two 

 distinct but adjacent galleries, and one a month before the 

 other, proved to be parts of one and same nodide-Xool ; and I 

 have little or no doubt that it had been washed out of the 

 fourth bed and redeposited in the third. 



The hammer-stone was a quartzite pebble, found in the upper 

 portion of the fourth bed, and bore distinct marks of the use 

 to which it was applied. 



Speaking of the discovery of the tools just mentioned, Mr, 

 Prestwich said in 1859: — "It was not until I had myself 

 witnessed the conditions under which flint implements had been 

 found at Brixham, that I became fully impressed with the 

 validity of the doubts thrown upon the previously prevailing 

 opinions with respect to such remains in caves " (/*/«'/. Trans., 

 i860, p. 2S0) ; and according to .Sir C. Lyell, writing in 1863 : 

 — " A sudden change of opinion was brought about in England 

 respecting the probable co-existence, at a former period, of man 

 and many extinct mammalia, in consequence of the results 

 obtained from the careful exploration of a cave at Brixham. 

 • . . The new views very generally adopted by English 

 geologists had no small influence on the subsequent progress of 

 opinion in France " ("Antiquity of Man," pp. 96, 97). 



Bench Cavern. — Early in 1 86 1 information was brought me 

 that an ossiferous cave had just been discovered at Brixham, 

 and, on visiting the spot, I found that, of the limestone quarries 

 worked from time to time in the northern slope of Furzeham 

 Hill, one known as Bench Quarry, about half a mile due north 

 of Windmill Hill Cavern, and almost overhanging Torbay, had 

 been abandoned in 1S39, and that work had been recently 

 resumed in it. It appeared that in 1839 the workmen had laid 

 bare the greater part of a vertical dyke, composed of red clayey 



